How Dolly helped change a nation

It was a terse if ironic typewritten invitation. 'Lunch, Friday October 21,' it said 'to meet two former South African captains.'

Although the address should have given an indication of what to expect, what the invitation had not explained is that one of the captains would be black and the other white. And there they were, cheerfully chatting over a drink that October afternoon in 1966.

It was at the upmarket house of an Indian doctor in Laudium, which was grand apartheid's designated Indian satellite town on the outskirts of Pretoria. Under the country's draconian racist laws, it was also one of few places where a mixed function of this nature could legally be held.

Basil D'Oliveira had by then been capped for England, the other was Trevor Goddard.

It had been 10 years since D'Oliveira had, as a 25-year-old, first led the alternative body representing South African non-whites (South African Cricket Board of Control) against the Kenyan Asians. The first of the two little known series was in Kenya in 1956, the second two years later in South Africa.

Goddard had at one time also led a side in which D'Oliveira played: a privately organised International Cavaliers team and which in 1962/63 toured the Greek island of Corfu, Kenya and later what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It was why they were more than nodding acquaintances.

Within 23 months of that gathering, Dolly had unwittingly been embroiled in political events over which he had no control. Events that would haunt those who banned him from touring South Africa with Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) side for the proposed visit of 1968-69.

It is 40 years since September 17, 1968 when South African Prime Minister John Vorster stood on that Bloemfontein Town Hall stage and to roars of approval, acted as the hangman of not only the tour, but began what were the first steps to the nation's cricket isolation. A known Nazi , Vorster, was preaching to the converted.

Barely 24 hours earlier Tom Cartwright had withdrawn from the side as the alleged shoulder injury had not responded to treatment and D'Oliveira invited as a replacement. This was after the MCC selectors controversially failed to select him for the tour and began a media furore over Dolly's omission.

It had been while on a tour organised in 1963/64 by former England fast bowler Alf Gover, and included among other countries Pakistan, which led to major changes in Dolly's life. Arriving from Nairobi in what was then Bombay, there was no way that the Indian immigration staff at passport control would allow him in on his South African passport.

What an ironic slap in the face for the earnest all-rounder. And all he wanted was a bed for the night. Officialdom though found a way around the impasse. He had to sign a form declaring he was a South African of Indian parentage and put up £200 and that he would leave for Karachi the next day.

The next step was how, on his return to England, he applied for and was granted within weeks British citizenship, smoothing the way for Test selection. On September 17, 1968, switching from Afrikaans to a thickly accented guttural slurring English, Vorster rejected the credentials of the MCC touring party.

"It's not the MCC team. It is the team of the anti-apartheid movement. We are not prepared to accept a team thrust upon us . . . It is a team of the political opponents of South Africa. It is a team of people who don't care about sports relations at all."